HugePoker

The frustration has continued. I haven’t cashed in *anything* since my last post. I’ve bubbled a mega-satellite, finishing 7th while the top 5 finishers got $10,000 each. I’ve busted out 10th (out of 10) in a single-table satellite when my Aces fell to the mighty King-Eight. I’ve busted out of the Wynn tournament in a huge 3-way pot when my (again) Aces got all the money in on the *turn* against K-Q on a Q-9-3-3 board (in case you don’t see it, his King is counterfeited - if he hits a King for top two pair, I’ve got a higher two pair). I built up a good stack in another mega-satellite, and then in three quick hands lost a coinflip with JJ vs AQ, chopped a big pot with 99 vs Q-9 when we both made straights on the river, and then got my short-stack in with AJ against AQ (AQ continues to be my cursed hand of the tournament - I can’t win with it and I can’t beat it). I thought I had hit rock-bottom when two nights ago Mark, Josh and I all played the 11PM “last chance” tournament at the Rio, and I lasted a withering hour and a half without winning a single pot (OK I lied - I got a walk in the big blind once - woohoo!) - possibly the most pathetic tournament I’ve ever played - no big hands, nothing dramatic, not even any tough decisions, just a slow draining death by paper cuts.

The only bright spot in the week was Josh - after I would bust out of the Wynn or the Rio tournaments I would hang around to sweat him as he went on to the three best cashes of his poker career - 2nd at the win for $2,000, 4th at the Wynn for $1,000, and then 2nd at the Rio 11PM where I had my miserable performance, for $3,000. Mark and I stayed up until 5:30AM to cheer him on and advise him in his masterful performance (he really should have won the thing - the woman he faced heads-up was pretty weak, and they ended up getting almost all the chips in the pot with Josh’s A9 against the villainess’s K9 and ended up splitting the pot when they both made straights with their 9’s - seems a little familiar). If he had won that hand it would have been all but over and he would have pocketed $4,800 instead of $3,000. But still, his best cash ever warranted a walk across the street at 5:30AM for a celebratory breakfast at T.G.I. Fridays at the Gold Coast. I wasn’t celebrating Josh’s success only out of supportive camaraderie - I had a 25% stake in his action, so while I was hemorrhaging money at least Josh was providing me with a slight profit infusion.

The next day I declared that that miserable late-night tournament was going to be the low-point of my World Series … not that I would necessarily cash the next time I played, but that things would improve from that point on, with better play, better focus, and ultimately some cash. I’m not sure if my prediction/pronouncement has held up – I’ve had a couple of good runs, and I think I’m playing fine (even quite well sometimes) but the frustration continues, hitting its climax a few hours ago when I ran into the worst bad beat of my poker career (pretty sure that’s true – maybe something more freakish has happened online, and I’ve had bad beats that have cost me more money or equity, but in terms of pure odds and pure stupidity, this one has to be the worst)…

I was playing in the noon Caesars tournament - $340 buyin, 154 players, very deep starting stacks. I ran into a nasty speed bump early on when I flopped a set of nines on a 9-T-Q board and was confident that my opponent had JJ, QQ, KK, AA or AK because of the preflop action. I raised very strongly on the flop to make any of those hands pay dearly to beat me (or if she’s got QQ, oh well, she’s getting my chips anyway). She called reluctantly and I knew I was ahead, but when a hideous Jack fell on the turn, all of the sudden the number of my opponent’s possible hands that beat me went from one out of five to four out of five. When she made a very value-ish looking bet into me, 80% looked more like 99%, and I had to sadly fold my set. Later I made a speculative raise with 87s and got called in three places. The 3-5-6 flop with two of my suit looked like it gave me 15 outs twice even against an overpair or a set, so I was pretty happy to get a lot of chips in on the flop. When I got checkraised all-in by the big blind I thought “oh well, I’m probably still ahead” and flung in my chips, only to have the guy turn over J-6 offsuit (remember that he called a raise with that), giving me … umm let me see it’s hard to count that high … 21 outs twice … making me a 69% favorite even though I had no pair on the flop, but the turn and river brought nothing but bricks and half my stack was drained away. After these serious setbacks I kept fighting, building my stack back close to average by the dinner break, so I was feeling pretty good about my play as I went off to the BBQ joint at Caesars for BBQ brisket and jalapeño cornbread. The dinner break at Caesars is 80 minutes, which always seems like a bit too long, especially when stuff like the following happes:

First hand back from the break, it’s folded to me in the hijack and I look down at a pair of Jacks. I raise the 1200 big blind to 3200. The small blind calls. The flop comes 7-T-J rainbow. The only thing that beats me is 8-9 for the straight, and if he’s got that then God bless him. When he shoves in for a massive 20,000 chips on the flop I’m almost certain he doesn’t have the straight, and I snap call. Guess what he has … can you guess? He has Ace-Ten-offsuit. Second Pair. I love this guy. He’s (almost) drawing dead and he’s throwing money at me. Fantastic. Let’s take a moment here to evaluate his play. Can he make a better hand fold? The next better hand after his is a Jack – but what kicker could I possibly have after I raise preflop that would likely be folding? QJ … maybe? But with his massive bet even QJ might get suspicious and make a loose call. Anything better than a Jack is obviously calling. OK so getting a better hand to fold is a bit of a tall order. Can he get a worse hand to call? Maaaaayyybe T9 or T8 would call, but they would call because they have decent outs against a hand like AT, so he’s not really gaining much there either. He’s a coinflip against KQ, which might call and might not, but he doesn’t really gain much from either response. So there might be a small handful of hands that he could force into a “mistake”, but every other hand I could have will make a perfect decision when he shoves – folding if they’re behind and calling if they’re ahead, and he’s risking 17 big blinds to win 8. His play is really really icky, and when I see his cards I think “I love you, you idiot!”

The turn is a Ten and everyone chuckles a little, since his hand improved to trip tens but mine improved faster to Jacks full. When the river brings yet another Ten, no-one chuckles, and in fact a loud staccato shout erupts from pretty much everyone but me, and two other players say in unison “OH MY GOD!”. Then everyone gets silent, looking at me to see how badly I’ll blow a gasket. I shake my head a little and grimace, but then I laugh and push my chips forward for the dealer to count. Sort of adding insult to injury is the fact that I barely had him covered, so I have to sit there for a few hands before I could get my puny stack in play, ending up as a coinflip with KQ vs 22, and of course losing it. The players say various things to console me like “well at least you’ve got a good story” and “you’re really extraordinary for taking it so well”. Thanks guys. I can’t resist an only slightly sarcastic “Nice Hand, Sir!” but I do restrain myself from sniping “Well Played!” and I certainly avoid the moronic and overly abused cliché “That’s Poker!!!”. When the money went in on the flop, I had a 97.2% chance to win the hand and he had 2.8%. When the Ten hit on the Turn, strange as it might sound, his chances got *worse* (because the possible straights and Aces full are no longer possible) to 2.3% vs my 97.7%. He would have been in better shape against me if I had flopped the nut straight.

I went home, took the night off from poker and drove to a movie theater to watch “Wolverine”, slurping a milkshake.

Back to the fray tomorrow. Probably mega satellites at 3PM and 8PM. It has to get better, right?

I’m having a pretty rough time at this year’s WSOP. I’ve got 2 small cashes - $500 in a single-table satellite and $1381 in a big event at Caesars - and several crushing defeats. I busted out of the only bracelet event I’ve played in record time (an hour and a half), I’ve been absolutely murdered by A-Q, both in my hand and in my opponents’, and yesterday I made deep runs in two mega-satellites (generally my bread and butter), actually bubbling the second one at 2AM this morning when I finished 7th, with the top 5 finishers getting $10,200 each.

I can’t even cash at the Wynn daily tournament, which continues to have some of the worst play imaginable (I’ve only played it three times this trip, so there’s still hope). Here’s an example from today’s donk-fest:

1st player: limp
4th, 5th, button: limp
SB: limp
BB: raise to 8BB
1st player: reraise all-in for 80BB
everyone folds to the BB who snap-calls 80BB

1st player (limp-re-shoving for 80BB): AJ
BB (raising and then calling off his 80BB stack): A5s

Thank god they chopped the pot - I didn’t want either of these players leaving my table.

Driving back from the Wynn I said to myself “OK, Huge, you’re having a pretty bad run, and it’s frustrating, but here you are in Vegas, playing poker at the World Series, hanging out with poker celebrities [last night Vanessa Rousso stopped by my satellite table, reached over my shoulder and knocked my chips over, which got some very shocked looks from my table-mates] and driving your sporty new convertible around - maybe your life isn’t SO horrible”. I’ll try to maintain a little perspective.

No definite plans for the coming week- I’ll play the mega-satellites whenever they have sufficient numbers, and I’ll probably keep playing the deep-stack tournaments at Caesars or Venetian, and the good old idiot-fest at the Wynn if I bust out early from a noon tournament.

still slugging,
-huge

As my twitter-followers know, I’m out of the $1K stimulus package event. I’m not sure, but I think this was my fastest bust-out from a WSOP tournament - I know I had one last year where I busted before the first break, but I think this one was even shorter…

I caught some strong hands early on, but never got enough action on them to win a big pot. In the process I think I developed a pretty loose-aggressive image, when in fact I was playing pretty conservatively. But when I did try to get pushy I never got any respect, and drained away some chips with continuation bets. I lost a big chunk with A-K against a guy who called my limp-reraise out of position with sixes and then called a big flop bet with third pair. If I’d had the guts to 2-barrel him on the turn I probably could have pushed him out, but that would have committed my whole stack and I just assumed he must be stronger than sixes - I thought Jacks or Queens were likely when he called on the flop so I just shut down.

After that I bounced between 1500 and 2000 chips with the blinds at 25-50 (the started at 25-25). The player on my right raised to 150 and I looked at A-Q - I flat-called in position and everyone else folded. The flop came Q-4-4 with two spades, my opponent checked and I bet 300. He immediately checkraised to 825, which would have committed over a third of my remaining chips. I decided he had seen me bet the flop and then give up quite a bit, so he didn’t have to have a big hand, and that if he had me beat the money was going in anyway, so I reraised to 1650 all-in. He actually thought for a long time, which made me think my hand was good (or possibly chopping), but he finally called and turned over Kings. No suckout on the turn or river and Huge was out in a big fat hurry.

Not sure when the next big event will be, but I’ll keep reporting…

sadly,
-huge

My WSOP has had a slow start on many pokerish and non-pokerish levels … I didn’t play any poker for the first two days here largely because I was recuperating from a wee bit of the old food poisoning that I collected from some or other bite of junk food along the road trip – could have been the pizza hut in Southern Oregon, but my money’s on the greasy breakfast buffet in Twin Falls, Idaho. The ice in my cooler melted and leaked out onto my laptop, causing the screen to fade to near-invisibility, and the wireless internet system I was expecting to use has been a disaster, so I’ve had a lot of frustrating technology-wrestling going on. I’ve played 2 $250 mega-satellites, 2 $340 multi-table cash tournaments and an assortment of single table satellites ranging from $65 to $275, and I’ve won … zero dollars.

In one of the single-table tournaments I got down to the final 2 players with a 2-to-1 chip lead and the other guy suggested that I could take $700 and he would take $420, but that wasn’t quite good enough and I thought I could make better decisions than he could, and sure enough a few hands later we got all the chips in with his K-3 vs my A-6 … King on the flop, Three on the river for good measure and he sucked out to double up, later catching trips on the flop to knock me out with … zero dollars. But I don’t feel bad about my deal-refusal – in the long run I think I’ll make more than $700 in that spot, so turning it down made sense.

In other tournaments I…

- Flopped a flush and got all my chips in, only to be beaten on the river by a royal flush

- Got all my chips in pre-flop with Queens, lost to a set of deuces on the river

- Had this old codger give me a stern lecture about my reckless play after I shoved Ten-Three suited (with five big blinds mind you) and got lucky against A-K … then smugly laughed and taunted me about how beautifully he had trapped me when he raised with A-K and I reshoved with A-Q (9BB this time) and his hand held up to knock me out. Yep, nice trap sir – very sneaky – you totally outplayed me.

Today’s cash tournament at Caesars was my first pretty good run. I got off to a great start, nearly doubling up on the second hand, built a very healthy stack for several hours but then dwindled by the dinner break, quickly recovered from 10,000 chips to 35,000 but then ran my Jacks into Aces and was out in 55th out of 240 starters, with 27 making the money. Sigh.

Tomorrow is my Day 1 of the $1000 WSOP stimulus package event (Day 1a just finiehed). This will be the largest non-main-event tournament in history – it’s completely sold out at 5800 players and my first real WSOP event. They’ve improved the structure of the lower-buyin events this year, but because this is “only” a $1,000 buyin event, things will still be flying pretty quickly, and it’s likely that I will have busted or doubled up within the first hour or two.

There are various ways to follow the action if you are so inclined. I’ve just set up a “twitter” account (yes, my first social networking account of any kind – I overcame my paranoia since all the cool poker players are doing it) which you can get to by CLICKING HERE. If you don’t know how to use twitter, well, neither do I. I think the way it works is that I can text message in short posts, and if you’re “following” me you’ll get an update via the website, email or text message. If you’re twitter-versant and have advice for me or others trying to use it to follow my WSOP progress, post a comment on this thread.

There’s also the trusty old PXF live updates page. It doesn’t look like anyone else is posting WSOP news there yet, so I might have the page to myself.

More general coverage will be at PocketFives but they may have news of me because I’ve registered with them – in fact they’re supposed to be following my twitter account and re-broadcasting anything I post there.

I’m sure cardplayer.com and pokerpages.com and probably others will have more-or-less live coverage, mostly of the famous players’ progress and not so much of people like me, but who knows… You’ll have to find the exact pages yourself, as it’s past my bedtime.

So … Noon Pacific Time … May 31 … First shot at a 2009 WSOP bracelet … would be a good time to get back to some serious winning.

I’ll be in touch. Somehow.

-huge

I’m in Springdale, Utah, a mile from the South entrance to Zion National Park and 2.5 hours Northeast of Las Vegas. I’ll spend tomorrow hiking around Zion, one of the most surreal and most beautiful places on the planet, then a quick drive to one of the most surreal and … most … something other than beautiful places on the planet. I hadn’t realized Zion was so close - aside from the weird juxtaposition it’s nice to know that I can run away from Vegas for a day-hike in Zion.

Tomorrow is the official starting day of the 2009 World Series of Poker. They’ve added a clever gimmick this year, a $1000 buyin “stimulus package” event starting on May 30, which is the first bracelet event I’m likely to play (they’re calling it that because normally the cheapest bracelet event open to the general public is $1500 - so Harrahs is just looking out for the poor poker players feeling the pinch of the weak economy, like poker welfare).

I’ll keep you posted…

-huge

This will be a short post (I promise), and the video link is only one minute long.

Here’s the deal - it’s around 1AM on a Friday night, sometimes that’s a good time to play because people tend to act a little crazy. I busted out of one tournament and jumped into a $109 buyin turbo satellite that had already been running for a few minutes. Because I was joining late I had to wait until my big blind, so I waited several hands and was pleased to find Ace-Queen on my first hand. Keep in mind that this is a $109 tournament and not a $0.33 tournament…

Click Here to see the rest (I forgot to boost the volume, so you might need to turn up yours)

I’ve been working on fixing my blog installation so that I could start posting again. As you can see it has a different look to it, and the URL has changed from http://hugepoker.info/wordpress/ to http://hugepoker.info/blog/ (but if you enter the old URL it should redirect you to the right place).

There have been a few news items or tournament scores I’ve wanted to post, but I didn’t want to post them until I felt like the blog software was working properly. Hopefully it is now – please let me know if you run into any problems.

I leave for the World Series of Poker in about a week (I’m driving this year so I don’t know exactly when I’m leaving Seattle) so I’m trying to prepare, getting my mind and body ready for 5-6 weeks in Vegas. Once again, you’re all invited to join/visit me in Vegas any time, and the main thrust of Team Huge will be descending on Sin City from June 22 through June 26 (about a week before the main event starts - these are different dates from what I reported in my last post a few weeks ago). I have some good info on hot deals on hotel rooms, so let me know if you’re thinking of coming.

I’ve been playing a lot of satellites online in the past week, partly because it’s a good way for me to make money, and partly because I plan on playing a lot of satellites in Vegas. I’ve had a rollercoaster in the past few days … I had been playing almost exclusively on PokerStars, but then realized that FullTilt was running their “FTOPS” (Full Tilt Online Poker Series), so that some good satellites should be running over there. The first day I tested the waters I had tremendous success, winning 4 out of 4 of the satellites I played … well, maybe that’s stretching it. I should say 4 out of 4 of the satellites I entered. Confused? There was a satellite getting ready to start at 1:30AM with a $75 buyin, guaranteeing 2 seats into a $216 buyin tournament for the next day. I noticed that no-one was signed up for it with only a couple of minutes until start time and I assumed that it would just get canceled if they didn’t get 5 or 6 players, but I signed up anyway. In the final seconds before start time another player signed up, but that was it – 2 players. And they guaranteed 2 seats. So we both won. Without playing a single hand. Easiest $141 I’ve ever made. Weird.

In addition to that tournament/windfall, I did actually play hands in 3 others, scoring prizes of $216, $535 and $535, so I pulled in $1500 in prize money for a $300 investment, and I was feeling like this satellite stuff was as easy as pie, which it is sometimes.

In the past year or so I’ve started doing a funny thing with many of the tournaments I play online. I installed some screen-capture software on my computer so that I can record the tournament screen, along with my commentary that I speak into a microphone. I think I may have posted a brief snippet from a tournament several months ago, and it was always my intention to publish more here, but with my old blog and webhosting I didn’t have enough space online to publish anything substantial. The main reason I do it is not to publish them and glorify myself, in fact making them available on my blog seems about as terrifying as it does fun … but I think that when I’m recording it forces me to focus more, talking through each hand and how I’m thinking about it. If I pretend I’m doing it for an audience I’m hopefully a little less likely to make silly impulsive donkey plays without thinking about them. I’m not sure how well it works – I still make bad mistakes, but every once in a while I get all ready for a checkraise bluff and then talk myself down from the edge. The fact that until now I couldn’t actually publish a full video on my blog, plus the fact that I usually just deleted recordings of tournaments in which I lost, somewhat diminished the embarrassment-deterrent factor, but I still think it helped me to focus, at least sometimes. Maybe now that I actually can publish them it will force me to focus even more – in fact if I were really brave I’d force myself to publish the videos with my worst plays of the week. Yeah, umm, we’ll see.

Possibly worse than the embarrassment I might feel at publishing examples of my questionable poker play for public scrutiny is the sickening cringey feeling I have when I hear my own voice recorded – yeah I know everyone feels that way, and yeah acoustic difference between how your voice sounds from inside your head blah blah blah. And it’s especially bad when I get all excited or pissed off in an online tournament. Many of you may think of me as all composed and Mr. Logical and even-tempered and all that crap, and if you’ve seen me play poker live you probably have mostly witnessed the same thing (except maybe when I put a nasty bad beat on Dan in our home game and do a little “in your face” dance). But when I’m sitting in my basement office in front of my computer screens and someone puts a nasty beat on me (or vice versa) I tend to get a little animated. Or maybe a lot. If you’ve ever watched the show “24” you may be familiar with the Jack Bauer mantra/outburst whenever some witness he’s protecting gets shot or some other tragedy befalls him and he shouts out in his explosive gravelly man-voice “DAMN IT!”. I once suggested that we should have a drinking game in which everyone has to take a shot of tequila whenever Jack yells “DAMN IT!” … but I digress. My version of the Bauer rage-at-the-world exclamation tends to be this horrible strangled guttural growl at the moment that the bad card hits the table, a sort of “GRhrghgroOOOAAH … GOD … DAMNIT!!”, sort of like this (this one almost certainly cost me $2600):

CLICK HERE FOR HUGE PAIN

OK I just watched it again … that’s really embarrassing.

I did record the three tournaments I won that day, and I may publish them later, but that was several days ago and there’s been bigger action since then. After my big winning day, I decided to step up to the bigger games, playing in some $216 buyin satellites into the $2620 FTOPS big-buyin event. And on my first one it looked like I was golden, until I got down to 12 players left with 8 winning the $2620 prizes, with an average playable stack, and I got my Aces cracked by a horrible call from T9s (“hdsjfgsfjdgsf … GOD DAMNIT!”). After that followed the above published video suckout, and more and more losses (punctuated by one more $535 win) until I had pissed away almost all of the $1200 profit from my day of glory. This morning I was feeling that particular sense of disappointment after having a very pleasant success and then seeing it all slip away. There was another $216 satellite at 12:15PM, but I was going to just skip it – if I lost that it would wipe out all my gains from the week, and of course I shouldn’t be thinking about that, but I just wasn’t feeling very positive … but then I managed to rouse myself and talk myself into the idea that I’m good value in those satellites – it looked like it would be a big field (ended up with 114 players), and I jumped in. It ended up being a massive up-and-down battle, and in the end it turned out to be (I’m pretty sure) the biggest comeback victory I’ve ever had in a poker tournament of any significance. I present to you now, for your viewing pleasure and amusement, 75 minutes of poker thrills and spills, bluffs, monsters and suckouts. If you want to watch the whole thing, more power to you. If you just want to see/hear those embarrassing moments of lost emotional control on the part of yours hugely, check out the few minutes around 42:00 (the truly grizzly suck-and-resuck version of GRHHFGHHH, DAMNIT!) … after that watch me get to my lowpoint to start my Phoenix-from-the-ashes recovery. Actually the next 10 minutes after the 42 minute mark are pretty good, and then the best verbal poker-Turrett’s outburst comes at the 66 minute mark, involving several stages of denial, bargaining, anger, joy, relief, acceptance, all in the course of one poker hand. The audio’s not always great – let me know if you just can’t play the video at all (or if you can only view one of the videos I published here and not the other).

Huge makes miracle comeback in $2600 satellite
[may take some time to load, a long time if you have a slow connection - you can just set it loading and do something else while it's downloading - the video won't start until you click the start arrow.]

That was the 6th of those I played, so I put in $1300 before I won the $2600, not too bad. If life and poker were just, I would have won the first two I played and lost this one, but I can’t complain too much about doubling my money…

I welcome questions or criticism of anything in the videos I put up here – you can write them in the comments or email them to me. Just try not to be TOO abusive, or you’ll know I’m sitting here whining “daaaaammn iiiit”.

In addition to the other blog changes, the whole email subscription system has been upgraded and will hopefully be more consistent. If you didn’t get an email notification you probably won’t be reading this, but if at any time you realize that you’re not getting messages notifying you of a blog update, let me know and I’ll make sure you’re subscribed correctly.

-huge

Forgive me huge blog fans for I have neglected. It’s been almost 5 months since my last confession…

When last I blogged I was abandoning a major poker tournament in favor of another week of beach-bum-dom in Costa Rica. That small deviation from the poker plan cascaded into three months of very little poker. I was feeling burned out, and 2008 was not progressing very well after the two previous stellar years, so I took a break. In the past two months I’ve been making my way back to poker-mind, and it remains to be seen whether the time off has helped my game or not, but I have had a few good results, and the World Series is rapidly approaching, so it seems like I’d better dust off my poker face and my blogging fingers.

(mostly) poker news from the past five months…

Almost no poker for the end of 2008. Finished 2008 somewhere in the vicinity of breakeven (ugh) - I haven’t even bothered to dig through and figure out whether I had a small gain or small loss. Either way, disappointing.

We seem to have elected a black President - apparently with at least a handfull or two of functioning brain cells - how cool is that? Actually I was in Costa Rica on election night and I knew the race had been called when I heard a group of women shrieking in celebration in the street. It’s unclear how Obama will land on the whole online-poker legislation issue, but I guess I can cut him some slack for a little while - maybe it’s not the *most* important issue on his plate.

Another (non-poker-related) trip to the Caribbean, making 3 hops in 3 months: Curacao&Aruba, Costa Rica, Virgin Islands. That didn’t suck at all.

Two trips to Vegas, first one kind of blah, second one successful, both for me and for Team Huge, including biggest-ever tournament cashes for Dan, Maya and Deb - hopefully I’ll dedicate a whole blog post to that one soon. I’m so proud of you kids!

Some good online scores in the past month, mostly in satellites, but also my worst satellite bubble finish ever: top 32 players get $5200, 33rd gets $300, I finished 34th for zero dollars - and the most money I’ve ever lost in a multi-table online tournament, a $400-rebuy satellite to the $10,000 “SCOOP” main event, which I wouldn’t even have known about except that Mark called me up a few minutes before the tournament started, convinced me I should play, and transferred me some money to make sure I had enough to cover a few rebuys (luckily he bought 20% of me, so he had to share 20% of my pain). Overall it’s been a good month though.

The last trip to Vegas was followed by my first trip to New Orleans (shocking, I know), where no poker was played but Mrs Huge and I consumed 6 orders of bread pudding and at least that many sazeracs. That also didn’t suck even a little. Don’t even get me started about the foie gras.

Planning is in full swing for the 2009 World Series of Poker, and once again I plan to be there for the entire series (if I don’t go insane and my sinuses don’t dry up and stop working). It’s looking like Team Huge will be there roughly June 28 - July 3, and you’re all invited to make the pilgrimage either that week or any other time - I’ll be there from May 26 until I bust out of the main event (or advance to the final table), hopefully in mid-July. There are great deals to be had at some very nice hotels, like Bellagio for $90/night - let me know if you’re interested and I’ll fill you in on the details.

I landed the starring role in “Sherlock Holmes and the Crucifer of Blood” at Centerstage Theatre, which turned out to be a blast.

In an attempt to single-handedly (four-handedly?) prop up the ailing economy and automobile industry, Mrs Huge and I both bought new cars, without having any intention to do so mere days beforehand. Photos of the new huge-mobile here. Mazda was desperate to get rid of the remaining 2008 miatas to make way for the 2009s, so they offered a $5000 rebate on cars that were already selling under invoice, and I pretty much couldn’t afford not to buy it. Anyone want to buy a 1992 miata?

In upcoming poker news, if you live in Seattle, you should come on Friday night (ie tomorrow, April 17) to the Nebunele Theatre Co fundraiser poker tournament. I’ll be the tournament director, several members of Team Huge will be dealers, and if last year’s event is any indication the level of play will be so soft that anyone with any poker abilities at all will stand a good chance of running over it. Last year about half way through I broke down and started offering poker strategy pearls of wisdom to the players, which is highly unconventional behavior for a tournament director, but it seemed like a better alternative to screaming. Let me know if you want details and I’ll get them to you.

This is the first post in this blog since moving the website from one hosting plan and server to another, and I’ve only just managed to wrestle it back to apparent health. Hopefully things will be more stable than they have been, but let me know if you experience trouble or flakiness in accessing the posts or getting the email notifications.

It’s a pleasure to return to HugePoker land. Here’s to a better 2009, in poker and in whatever other gambling/investing/risky business we choose to engage in…

huge

Once again something has gone wrong with my blogging software, which led to this post being sort of half-visible, or visible to some and not others. I don’t know if my editing it to add this preamble will cause you all to get a new email announcement or not. If you’ve already read about me sitting on a beach in Costa Rica, then you probably don’t need to read it again. If the whole beach scene sounds fresh, new and exciting, then read on…

I hope you won’t all be too disappointed, but I’ve elected to forego the Latin American Poker Tour events in San José because I’d rather sit on the beach, play in the ocean, hike around in the jungle and eat lots of rice and beans.

I’ve spent almost a week in Costa Rica, most of it in a little backpacker enclave called Montezuma. I like it here, and I figured out a couple of days ago that I just wasn’t feeling all that enthusiastic about leaving the beach for a big unknown city to play poker. What sealed the decision for me was the discovery that they’ve canceled the multi-table satellite for the main event and they’re only holding single-table satellites, which will only run tonight. Without the super-satellite I would have a few of the secondary tournaments to play but I probably wouldn’t feel like shelling out the $3500 to play the main event. So the beach is looking pretty good.

Instead of playing poker, today I walked down the beach, jumped around in the waves, which are just on the edge of being too scary to play with, hiked up a jungle trail to a massive waterfall & swimming hole, back to town for avocado sandwich and strawberry-banana smoothie, back into the ocean, finished the novel I was reading, picked up laundry which was becoming a desperate concern, shower, now typing this and deciding which restaurant I should pick for dinner.

Pura vida…
-huge

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I stumbled out of bed at 10:20AM, and there’s a daily $109 satellite I often play that feeds into an $800 buyin EPT qualifier. But it’s pokerstars, so if I win the satellite I can just take the tournament dollars. I rummage up some breakfast (mmmm, pop tarts) and get to my computer just in time for the start of the tournament – actually I get there a minute or two after the start, but they let me sign up anyway and I jump in. I play a couple of hands and then I notice that something is funny. I notice that I’ve got 5000 chips, and so does everyone else. Hmmm, says I. Wtf? Of course what I forgot is that on Saturdays at 10:30AM it’s not the $109 super-satellite for the $800 qualifier, but the $800 qualifier itself, and I just didn’t notice because I was in a hurry to sign up.

I’m still in. Average stack with 42 left. Need to finish 3rd to win a trip to … wait for it … wait for it … did I mention it’s in mid-November? … so I can actually go if I win a seat, which is fortunate, although it would mean coming back from Costa Rica, staying in Seattle for a week and then turning around and flying to … I mentioned it was EPT, right? … you know that stands for European Poker Tour, right? … so where in Europe would you want to go in November? … Maybe Southern Italy or something right? … OK Paris would be fine … wait for it … wait for it … if I finish in the top three in this tournament I’m going to fabulous … wait for it … Warsaw.

I think I’ve forgotten to post here that I’m going to Costa Rica to play in the LAPT (Latin American Poker Tour). I still haven’t won a seat into the main event there, and if I’m not still playing in the Warsaw qualifier later this afternoon I’ll be taking one last shot at winning that online, and then there will be live satellites once I get to San Jose.